Nose Cone from B.F. Skinner's Pigeon-Guided Missile, on display in "Science in American Life." Photo courtesy American History Museum It’s 1943, and America desperately needs a way to reliably bomb ...

In 1943, the U.S. military had a problem. It didn’t suffer from a lack of bombs and missiles, but there was no reliable way to accurately guide them for a precision strike. A psychologist, though, had ...

The image of the crackpot inventor, disheveled, disorganized, and surrounded by the remains of his failures, is an enduring Hollywood trope. While a simple look around one’s shop will probably reveal ...

Many of mankind’s greatest innovations were products of war. Sadly, pigeon-guided missiles never had a chance to be one of them. That wouldn’t have been the case if B.F. Skinner had his way. In World ...

As World War II raged in the 1940s, a showdown between missile guidance systems unfolded in Building 20, home of the recently established MIT Radiation Laboratory. The “Rad Lab” team was secretly ...

Introduction: beyond the box -- A visible scientist: B.F. Skinner as public intellectual -- From pigeons to people: constructing the human Skinner box -- Conditioning a cure: behavior modification in ...